Patriots' coach: Microsoft Surface breakdowns are common - CNET

On Monday, Patriots' coach Bill Belichick said that this wasn't the first time that the team's tablets had malfunctioned.

CBS Sports.com reported that he said: "It's a pretty common problem. We have ways of working through it. There's really nothing you can do. It's not like the headsets where the other sides are really affected. You deal with what you deal with."

He said that the Patriots have experienced the problem at home and on the road. Their remedy, he said, was to use the old school method of printing photographs of formations. He said this method was "more dependable" than the Surfaces.

He added, however, that tablet trouble didn't affect the outcome of the game.

The idea, though, that Microsoft's tablets didn't work isn't a good look for Redmond or tech in general.

How often have the Surfaces malfunctioned during games? A Microsoft spokesman told me: "Not once this season have we experienced an issue related to the devices themselves. The issue is one of network stability in the various stadiums, which we have little control over."

Each team's Surfaces connect to private networks that are for a single team only. I understand that there have, indeed, been ongoing problems with those networks all year. It's unclear who provides those networks.

The NFL didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. However, I understand the organization will be issuing a statement later on Monday to clarify the specific issues involved.

When you've spent at least $400 million in getting the NFL to feature your tablets exclusively, it must be extremely frustrating that announcers referred to them initially -- and for quite a long time -- as iPads.

It must be doubly frustrating when on Sunday announcers associated the correct brand name with a malfunction, especially if it is indeed the case that this is entirely a network issue.